Phil Davis, a local resident and Civil War re-enactor came to
the meeting as our tech time speaker for August and discussed big guns
- otherwise known as artillery of the Civil War era.

He brought a model of a cannon, along with cannon balls, along with
some illustrations of early shells.

During Civil War times, cannons were mobile and used in
conjunction with infantry and each side's goal was to
capture the other man's artillery pieces. As Napoleon was
supposedly once asked, "Emperor, is God on our side?"to which
Napoleon replied, "My dear friend, God is on the side of the
man
with the most artillery."

Civil War era-artillery was typically crewed by seven and had ranges
out to 2000 yards.

There are three sorts of artillery pieces from this time. The
gun
- a flat-shooting, smooth-bore piece, a howitzer - an indirect-fire,
smooth-bore piece that lobs its shell overs much longer distances, and
"rifles" which used a rifled cannon barrel to achieve greater accuracy
and range. Indeed, the rifles "Parrott Rifles" were very
accurate
and the favorite of the troops.

Now there were also a variety of other rifles used. The old
bronze smooth-bore guns, some of them were rifled at the beginning of
the war to try to gain accuracy, but because the bore was made of a
soft metal, the rifling would wear off in a few hundred rounds at most.

Artillery shells
How many people think that Civil War cannons only fired iron cannon
balls? There is no dishonor in thinking this.
That's
what most people think.

But this lack of understanding also gets several people killed every
decade. Civil War ordnance is still deadly and
dangerous.

Davis then passed around a solid iron shell weighing twelve pounds.
"So what good is a single iron ball?" he asked.
First of
all it's a battering ammunition. It penetrates.
Furthermore, it makes a "ripping" sound as it goes through
the
air, adding to the psychological effect against enemy troops by scaring
the living snot out of people near the shell on the receiving end.
By firing it at the front of the rows of opposing troops, the
iron ball traveling at 2300-1600 fps would shred everyone it hit as it
"bounced" its way through the ranks.

Did Civil War artillery projectiles blow up? Yes.
When the
powder charge went off, a jet of fire would shoot around that
projectile, lighting a fuse that was driven into the shell.
It
was important that the loaders properly load an explosive shell into
the
cannon, because if the fuse hole was facing the powder charge in the
breech, there would be no delay. The shell would explode in
the
cannon, causing the cannon crew a really bad day.

Davis brought a case shot as well. This was invented by
Captain
Lewis Shrapnel. It is a shell body filled with musket balls
or
ball bearings with a smaller bursting charge. Shrapnel
realized
that you don't need that huge amount of powder inside a shell to cause
casualties because of the shell's velocity. All that is
needed is
for the powder charge to break the shell open. From that day
forward, when you were hit by the fragments of an exploding shell, you
were hit by shrapnel.

Solid shot for rifled cannons penetrated twice as deeply against a
target, but would not bounce like solid shot fired from smooth bore
cannons. Some explosive shells were rifled, enabling a
priming
fuse to be affixed to the nose of the shell. When the nose of the shell
impacted, it would detonate. Many others still relied on the
"timed" fuse that would be ignited by the flash of the powder charge
that fired the shell. There was a major problem with this
(and
hence the reason for so much unexploded ordnance from the era) as the
base would expand, preventing the flash from igniting the timed fuse.

Davis said he found a twenty pounder Parrott shell in Vicksburg,
Mississippi when he was a teenager. "I was walking behind the
motel I was staying at. The Vicksburg battlefields are huge.
I tripped over something. I started to kick it and
stopped
because I suddenly realized what I was about to kick. It was
the
base of a twenty-pound Parrott shell." He dug it up ad took
it to
the hotel lobby. The manager tells him to get out of there
with that shell, so he wrapped it up in foam and brought it back
home(!).

He took it out to a barn behind his house, drilled a hole and shook the
powder out. His dad didn't think the powder would be any good
after 125 years, but it burned just fine. That shell was
still
as deadly as the day it buried itself in that mud in 1863.
Why?
Because it had a timed fuse that didn't light. And
when it
hit, that mud sealed that cavity on the front, making it an airtight
compartment.

In 1966 outside of Washington, D.C., a family had moved to the country
to
get away from the hubbub. When they were digging the
foundation
for their house they found a bunch of cannon balls. Not
knowing
what they were they thought "Oh cool, those would be neat to set into
our mantle piece."

So when they put the mortar in they stuck these cannon balls into the
mortar. Some weeks later, they sat down to have their family
bonding moment in their brand new house in front of their brand new
fireplace with their really old artillery cannon balls in it (because
everybody knows that Civil War cannon balls don't explode, right?)
Soon, the shells reached that flash point for black powder and kaboom!
When one of the shells exploded, it sympathetically detonated the two
others that were there. The father caught a chunk of shell
that
took the corner of his head off. The son lost an eye.
Everyone else was deafened. Lesson learned the hard
way:
Civil War-era shells can still kill you.*

Davis also brought some canister shot. It's a tin cylinder
that
looks like a Campbell's soup can full of ball bearings. It
has a
fixed powder bag attached to the back of it. If you think
double-ought buckshot is wicked, this is its great, great grand daddy.
When this goes off, the force of the explosion shatters the
tin
sylinder, and the balls leave the muzzle like a giant shotgun.

Pickett's Charge
Gettysburg, 1863
by Phil Davis
On one side of the field is Picket, McCloud and Armstead. On
the
other, behind a stone wall lies a dug-in Union infantry and a battalion
of artillery with both smooth-bore and rifled guns. The
Confederates had to cross a mile and a quarter of open field and a road
that had picket fences on both sides of it, go up an incline and over a
stone wall to achieve victory against the Union line. General
Lee
was sure he could do it. However some of his subordinates
like
Longstreet were saying "General, that's not a great idea.
Knock
out a flank and make them come to us." Lee was a wonderful
strategist, but a lousy tactician on the two occasions he had
battlefield command.

The third day of Gettysburg was one of those occasions.
The
confederates stepped out of the woods that morning. They were
silent and they dressed their ranks at four and six feet.
Great
stirring speeches were given by the generals. Drums played.
Fifes played. People played bagpipes and marched
off
towards the union lines they could see in the distance.

For the first three to four hundred yards nothing happened.
It
looked like a grand parade. Take the point of view of a man
walking across that field. If you can close your eyes and
imagine
a mile to the left and a mile to the right were thousand and thousands
of men in gray and butternut uniforms, starry flags fluttering,
bayonets polished to a bright sheen, rifles gleaming in the sun, all
marching in straight ranks almost like it was a parade.

All of a sudden he can see puffs of smoke. He doesn't hear
anything yet. Then he starts to hear muffled booms as it
takes a
while for that sound to carry a mile and a quarter. Boom,
Boom,
Boom. One hundred and twenty seven pieces of artillery have
opened fire with solid shot. Large balls come riping through
the
sky at 1200 feet per second. They hit the dirt right in front
of
you. Puff. If you see a streak you're alright.
But if
you're that poor fellow who sees a dot come up and down - that's
because it's coming right at you - bouncing, skipping and then ripping
men to pieces as it bowls through the ranks. It literally
just
carves a line. The army of North Virginia was good infantry.
They dressed ranks shoulder to shoulder and they kept going
forward and for about fifteen minutes while these paths were carved.
And behind these great paths they were literally rows of
broken
men where the solid shot had ripped through.

When they got to a thousand yards from the Union lines, they crossed
the road. At this time, the smooth-bore guns stopped firing
solid
shot. The rifled guns had been firing impact fuse shells at
the
Confederate artillery since the smooth bore guns started
shooting
at the advancing infantry. Of course, the Confederate rifled
guns
had also been shooing at the Union artillery lines as well.
Some
of those poorly timed shells exploded overhead, some very close.
Men were falling left and right as cannon balls shredded men.
But like good infantry, they closed the ranks.

However, what once was a mile in each direction is now about a half
mile in each direction. the men are starting to get broken up
and
disorganized, but they keep going because they know that if they turn
around they've got to walk back through that same fire. When
it
gets to about eight hundred yards, the Union switches to case
(canister) shot. It sends this iron hail out upon the
advancing
troops. Now imagine those little half-inch hail stones are
not
made of ice, but they are made of case iron, lead or ceramic.
The
ceramic ones were the wicked ones because they hit bone and shattered.
These things come ripping through the sky and look like
someone
took a scythe and carved a swatch through the Confederate soldiers.

But these men were determined. They were ordered by
their
General, whom they believed the word, the truth, came from God to
General Lee to them directly. When General Lee said "You can
take
that hill." They said, Absolutely, we can take that hill if
you
say so, sir."

They pressed on. They got within two hundred yards -- two
football fields away. The artillery stopped shooting
momentarily.
Then the Union infantry raised up from behind the stone wall
and
started to pepper them with .58 caliber rifle muskets. The
sound
of mini balls zipping by permeated the air. "Zip! Zip! Zip!
Zip!"
and every once in a while "Smack!" That was the sound of a mini ball
hitting somebody. Above all this there was a Confederate
officer
who remembered hearing the artillery commander in the center of the
battery give the command, "Battery load canisters." He said,
"My
blood ran cold." He knew that he was going into the mouths of
those big guns...nothing more than giant shot guns, being loaded with
shot. He ordered his men "Double quick, get there before they
load!"

They'd gotten almost halfway across that open space, a hundred yards
away, when the guns erupted. Kaboom! He said it
looked
like his men had been pole axed - just dropped in place. He
fell
back and another Virginia regiment came through. He heard
another
command that again made his blood run cold. "Battery load
canisters, double!" As that Virginia regiment closed, they
fired.
For some reason, the Confederates didn't take as many
casualties
this time. As the Virginia regiment continued to close on
Captain
Cushing's battery, he gave the third command - the one that is not in
the book - "Battery load canisters, triple!" They loaded
three
canisters. There were three hundred men bursting into that
area,
less than one hundred yards from the guns, and they knew victory was
theirs if they could get to those guns before they fired.

They didn't, and those charging three hundred soldiers disappeared in a
pink mist that day. Literally, disappeared.

That's what Pickett's Charge was like from the point of view of the
Confederate soldier on the battlefield. Artillery was the
main
killer of the Civil War on an open field battle.